Description
Currently, measuring ‘success’ of the responsibility to protect (R2P) rests mainly on an interpretation of the principle only in terms of its third pillar: that the international community should respond when a state is manifestly failing to uphold its primary responsibility to prevent genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing. In this way, an effective intervention might be to stop further escalation of these crimes once they have already started - as was the case in 2008 post-election Kenya. But given the presence of international donors in the country prior to the December 2007 vote, it is surprising that the literature has yet to evaluate the possibility of an earlier intervention to prevent the death, disfigurement, and displacement of thousands in the weeks that followed. Indeed, the second pillar of R2P commands an earlier response from the international community: to assist and encourage states in upholding their primary responsibility to protect. Taking as a case study the United Kingdom’s presence in Kenya, this paper posits that donors tend to prioritise democratisation at the expense of mass atrocity prevention. Noting reports that the 2022 elections could prompt violence worse than in the 2007/08 period, it draws on project documents, parliamentary publications, and interviews with policymakers and practitioners to learn lessons for more effective atrocity prevention going forward. More broadly, the study comes at a time when the incidence of mass atrocities is increasing globally and when a better understanding of what ‘successful’ R2P looks like in practice is needed.
